Scratch Cat Fever!

Well it's all over now.  Six weeks ago I began, in an online workshop, learning about Scratch, the programming language developed at MIT to teach programming to kids.  It was great fun, although in the midst of it I was also trying to continue a graduate level course in curriculum design, attended an unrelated three day conference on digital curriculum curation, and finished up the school year, helped with graduation and then started the new school year two weeks later. Whew!  

But back to the Scratch workshop, or Creative Computing Online Workshop (CCOW) as it was officially known. Many thanks are due to Karen Brennan, a director at the Harvard graduate school of education for spearheading this project.  I learned so much in the six weeks, programming with Scratch being only one of them.  I finally started using Google+ as well as hangouts for the first time. What a great tool that is.  I would love to use Hangouts to connect students with others from another area.  There was a great camaraderie among the participants, and everyone helped each other out with questions on using Scratch, via the Google+ and Google Groups communities.  The scratch team set up a wonderful program with video tutorials and activities.  We also had to keep a design notebook as an electronic portfolio of evidence of our work for earning our certificate of participation. It was truly a MOOC. They also held biweekly office hour conferences via Google Hangout to answer questions and let us know what to expect the following week. There were even reading assignments and discussions, which I have to admit I did not get to, due to my other class, but I will go back and read the authors they recommended at a later date.

The workshop culminated in a real life symposium at Harvard University on the last Saturday of the workshop.  We were able to tinker with MaKeyMaKey and Lego WeDo blocks, got tips on how to do some advanced programming from the CCOW leadership team, and discuss issues in education and technology integration, among other things.  The symposium was set up like an edcamp, where we all had input into the topics for the mini sessions, then the schedule was arranged and everyone chose which session they wanted to attend.  I really loved getting a chance to play with the maker tools, or at least observe others doing it.  I am excited about the possibilities of using the MakeyMakey as an adaptive game controller with disabled students.  I just ordered one for my technology students (and me) to play with!

But most of all am so excited to start using Scratch with some of my students to teach them computational thinking.  We already started last week and they are excited about it too.  I like that it not only teaches how to create projects, but incorporates some mathematical concepts, such as x,y coordinates and degrees of a circle.  The kids were a little apprehensive when I mentioned algebra/geometry, but after they got it they were surprised how easy it was. 

I want to say thank you to Karen Brennan and all the rest of the CCOW leadership team for all their hard work and help on the program.  This was the best professional development or class that I have ever taken.  I wish we could do it again, on another subject, advanced Scratch, programming Raspberry Pi's, etc?  There were a few glitches, but the whole project was so well organized it was not an issue.  I will miss the office hours, which I attended most of them, I think.  They were well organized, interesting and fun too!  I can't say enough about the CCOW team.  It was wonderful!

Mass Digital Publication Conference (MADPC)

It's been a while since I have posted to this blog.  I have been busy with the end of school year, graduation planning and implementation as part of the graduation team at my school, the grad class I am taking as well as the online Scratch workshop I have been trying to keep up with.  But on my vacation this week, I attended the Massachusetts Digital Publication Collaboration conference in Burlington, MA.  (#MADPC on Twitter).

It was a very well organized conference led by the technology team from Burlington Public School department.  About 100 people (my estimate) attended the first day of the three day conference, and the numbers dwindled a bit by the third day.   I heard that they had over 500 people attend the first year, but this year (the third year it has run) many teachers in the area were still in school, due to make up days for snow days last winter.  The major goal of the conference was to get teachers together to collaborate and curate digital content for curriculum purposes.  But there were also workshops and lectures given by the technology specialists at BPS and a limited number of invited vendors.  

It was a productive conference, for me.  I learned a few things and got some ideas for doing a technology professional development event at my school.   I also met teachers from some of the surrounding towns who attended the conference and got ideas from them.  The presentations were great.  I saw a great presentation on elementary and kindergarten presentations using the iPad, by Dan Callahan, the technology integrator for the Pine Meadow Elementary School.  Also a few new information points for Google Apps for Education from Andy Marcinek, at the high school level. 

The technology program at BPS is phenomenal.  As you may know, they implemented a 1-1 iPad program a little over a year ago in the high school.  They really live and breathe technology in education and have a lot of ideas for implementation and integration of technology in the educational process.  Some members of the BHS student run help desk were there as well, set up at their own kiosk in the library, available to answer any questions attendees had about their iPads.

All in all, it was a great presentation.  The facility and the technical infrastructure was very impressive.  Thanks to Dennis Villano and Andy Marcinek and everyone else for a great conference, and it was free!  I hope they do it again next year.

Symbaloo: More than a bookmarking tool

Symbaloo is another web tool that I think has a lot of possibilities for the classroom.  It is a bookmarking tool, but looks very different from many of the curation/bookmarking tools available on the web currently.  It is a visual representation of links arranged in a checkerboard fashion and just fits on your homepage. It can have several pages, called Webmixes, arranged as tabs at the top of the page.  Each tile is a clickable link, which is easy to create.  You just click on a blank space, fill in the URL, pick a color or design if desired and save.  The tile pops into the space that was blank.  You can select from several pre-made Webmixes or start fresh and create your own. 

Here is a screenshot of one of my personal webmixes.  I used it to organize links for a WebQuest and shared it with each student.  That was a bit time consuming, but if you used the same links regularly, it might be worth the time as you only need to set it up once and then share it.  If you make changes, you can push the updates to people you already shared it with.

I think this tool has good potential for use in the classroom. I picture this tool as an organizational tool for students, as a review tool, or a choice tool for websites you want your students to use.  The visual nature of the tool makes it ideal for visual learners. 

Scratch!

I am finally learning about Scratch!  This is something I have wanted to start doing for a while now, so I am very excited.  I am participating in a 6 week long workshop via Google+ and Google Hangouts that is being conducted by the ScratchEd group at MIT and Harvard Universities, the people who created Scratch.

If you don't know what Scratch is, it is a programming language that is very user friendly, because it uses blocks, like puzzle pieces, that you connect to create a script, or program (see example to the right).  This can be used to create video games, but it can also be used to create multimedia presentations, digital artwork, animated cartoons, among other things.  The purpose of this tool is to teach computational thinking to students, and maybe they'll even go on to learn other, more complex programming languages. The Scratch community allows students to see other projects, and even open them up, see how they work and remix them to create their own versions. 

I am so excited to be learning this, so I can teach it to my digital technology students next year.  I have had some limited experience with programming, but I can see that this is fairly easy to learn at least the basics, and depending on their interest, go even farther and learn the more advanced concepts. Of course it is time consuming, and I am as bad as the kids spending too much time on this when I should be doing other things, like housecleaning, or working on my own school work!

I am also loving that I am learning more about Google+ and Google Hangouts, which I knew a little about, but had not spent too much time using those tools.

Here is a sample of my project for the the first week.  There were a couple of other practice assignments, but this one took the longest, although partially because I chose to keep adding things to it. But it is an "about me" presentation after all.  Click on the green flag below to watch my Scratch created presentation. 

If you would like to know more about Scratch, click the Scratch logo below. The video is a couple of years old, but is a good entry level introduction.  Have fun Scratching!

Shorten your URL AND Get a QR Code in One Place! | Bitly

I finally decided I should figure out how to get a shortened URL, now that I am posting links to Twitter (@cindyccm). So I went to bitly.com and I started playing around with it.  I discovered that you will see stats on how many people click on your bit.ly URL.  But the cool thing is you can also use that link to create a QR code for the URL, in just one click!  

• Go to bitly.com and set up an account, if you haven't already. Find a URL that you want shortened by pasting the link in the box that says: +Paste a link here, at the top of the page. 

• After you have made your shortened URL, click Your Stuff and Bitmarks, where you will see a list of your bit.ly links. 

•  On the link that you want a QR code for, click view stats, and then click the QR code icon.  It will pop up on a tab ready to copy! 

Cool, right?  Well, I thought so, hope you do too.  Have fun!

Prezi - Not your Father's PowerPoint

Prezi is an online presentation tool, that you can use to create interesting presentations that are non-linear and exciting because you can zoom in on some fine print or drill down into an image or diagram (check out the magnifying glass theme). 

There is a free version and two premium versions, but you can do a lot with the free version, like try it out and see if you like it.  There are also 2 EDU packages, the free edu package gives you 500 MG of storage and allows password protection, unlike the commercial free version.  The premium package allows working offline for $59 per year for a teacher account, and gives you 2 GB of storage space.

There are themes you can use to easily get started creating a Prezi.  The most important thing you should learn first is the transformation tool.  Click on any element that you have added to the Prezi and the transformation tool will pop up and allow you to move, size, rotate or scale your element. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is an image of the transformation tool:

You can import PowerPoint presentations into Prezi, but not all of the PowerPoint conventions will work on Prezi.  See prezi.com/support for more on that.

Here's a sample of one I really like, related to social media. The second one is one I created as a parent informational presentation (my first Prezi).  

Social Media 101

My first Prezi

Now check out this video to see how to get started.

Video tutorial Getting Started with Prezi

Meograph

This is one of my favorite tools.  I am surprised I haven't seen anyone writing about it. Meograph is a presentation tool that incorporates Google Maps, slides and a timeline to present a story. It uses images, video, and sound to tell the story. Very easy to start using, just enter when, where and what happened for each slide. Then add media. 

Here is a sample Meograph presentation:






Classroom Activities using Meograph to address Bloom's Taxonomy

• Students enter information and pictures about an historical event to help them to remember dates and events by doing, and also can review the slides later.
  Students can view a slideshow about Lewis and Clark’s expedition then analyze the maps in the presentation to understand the distances travelled, as well as the landforms or water bodies crossed for geographical as well as historical data.
• It can help them to understand the chain of events and repercussions of the civil war by evaluating events, dates and length of time between each event.
• They can create a presentation or biography about an historical event or person

For more information see:

http://www.meograph.com/educationexamples